1988 Education Ministers’ Agreement

It’s probably a little known fact, but in 1988 the Ministers of Education in the then existing EU states agreed that every EU citizen should be expected to learn three community languages.
In the UK we haven’t even paid lip-service to this.
Interestingly, it was in the same year that we went to war in Iraq – and thereby making a mockery of the EU and the United Nations – that in the UK we stopped even one foreign language being compulsory post-14. I felt as if I’d been stabbed in the back. All those years that I taught language, friendship and the handshake across cultures- all crushed and irradiated in a few months. I’d had so much faith in Blair, too. The rifts that those decisions caused across Europe seemed to undo the good of all that work so carefully planned by my colleagues and myself. There was some relief that I, then as a writer who protested against the war, could express that by becoming involved in "The Lines in the Sand project", organised by Mary Hoffman, Rhiannon Lassiter and the publishers, Frances Lincoln.
We do make ourselves into a laughing-stock. How dumb we are if we cannot even manage to speak one language other than our own well, let alone the extra one those Ministers of Education agreed on back then. We are telling ourselves that all will be fine because of the primary languages initiative.
Now, I do agree, that primary school age is a good time to learn languages. I find the age of nine ideal – the child can still mimic well, the palate is not yet set, the student relies on their memory rather than looking up, but at that age, they are sociable enough to want to use their language in a real context. However, the signs are not currently all that good. The same mistakes are being made as last time, in the 70s, when primary languages were introduced. There are not enough experts. Primary teachers are not being given enough time or help to deliver that curriculum effectively – which will eventually be off-putting for the students.
If it were done well, with all the advantages there are of learning a language at that age, there is every possibility that students would not only want to carry on with that language right put to sixteen or even eighteen, but also that they would be keen to take on another. Then we may be able to keep to the agreement we made in 1988. Except, I expect we would be faced with a shortage of language teachers.